Impact Update: Following up with LIFESPAN

LIFESPAN empowers children and adults with disabilities through education, employment and enrichment services. 

See PDF of Project Snapshot

See PDF of Impact Update Snapshot

LIFESPAN’s ability to deliver behavioral health services to their clients is dependent on a large series of employee training programs, being delivered in person across multiple sites state-wide, mainly through PowerPoint presentations. They reached out to Apparo for support to optimize these inefficient employee training programs.

Apparo matched LIFESPAN with a volunteer team from Cardinal Innovations Healthcare, who also generously sponsored the project. Cardinal helped LIFESPAN select/learn a content generation tool to work with their new learning management system. They delivered a solution which is anticipated to deliver $75,000+ in value to be redirected to job-specific, mission fulfilling work.

The system prior to working with Apparo:

• Lengthy new hire training (5 days)
• Time delays – those who needed a training had to wait until the next scheduled one
• Travel expenses for some trainers and some employees, depending on their location
• Limitations in content that could be created, due to capacity of training staff 
• Cumbersome manual tracking process

At the end of the project, Beth Brown, LIFESPAN Training Coordinator shared, “Apparo and Cardinal Innovations saved us more hours than can be imagined … researching options, parsing out and explaining all of the variables, trialing demos and more. As we move forward with our new digital tools, we expect to have some serious, long-term positive impacts, including an improved employee training experience with the anticipation of saving money on administrative costs so that revenue can be focused on the delivery of behavioral health services. “

Barbara Wilson, LIFESPAN Secretary and Chief Human Resources Officer, shared an example of the impact of Apparo’s work: “In the past, we had transportation drivers who, after a safety incident, needed to wait several weeks for a remedial safety class. We had to take them out of their jobs until this next class, limiting service to our clients. Now interventions will be quicker. They will be able take the class they need immediately, allowing them to get right back to serving our clients who need the transportation services to improve their lifestyles. Managers won’t have to waste their time trying to find substitute drivers, and we won’t lose the revenue.” 

One year later, LIFESPAN leadership shares that they have already fulfilled many of their goals and more.

One year after their project wrapped up, we checked in with Beth Brown and Lori Jakubowski, LIFESPAN State Training Manager. They shared with us the project’s impact and told us about the implementation of Articulate 360, the tool selected during this project. 

The volunteer team from Cardinal Innovations Healthcare helped them select Articulate 360 as the tool they needed to move forward. Because of the pandemic, they were only able to utilize the new virtual training system for about two and half months, but staff had already taken advantage of over 500 hours of content. In this short time, LIFESPAN realized many of the important benefits they had anticipated and more.

Lori shares that the implementation of “Articulate 360 has been great. It already saves us a lot of time and expense.”

LIFESPAN is well on their way to their anticipated goal of saving 4,700 training hours a week, the equivalent of 2 full time employees. They will dedicate that freed up valuable time to improving their training program and support to those they serve.

• PreService (new hire) training, which used to take 5 days, is now completed in 3 days. This allows 2 additional days for more specific on-site training. “It has opened up 2 days of free time for Beth and I. Normally in a new hire week we are booked solid, Monday through Friday, but now we are only booked Monday through Wednesday. We can use this time to create a training library, update our trainings to have the most recent information, and connect as a team.”
• “We’ve also already saved $500 of travel-related expenses in the short period we used Articulate.”
• All PreService forms and tests were repurposed to electronic format, saving time for grading, scanning and uploading, as well as saving paper/ink expense.

Beth shares that employee satisfaction with the new system is high. “With a staff that works different shifts and hours, blended and asynchronous training is beneficial and in high demand. Flexibility is going to be a continued benefit. Managers are reaching out, asking for new trainings to be created because they realize what a good tool this is.”

Beth also explains that today, because of COVID-19, “This type of virtual training is now mandated. It’s all we have. It’s serendipitous that we were proactive and got this onboard before the pandemic. That’s the silver lining. We were much more prepared.”

Lori adds that they were also able to utilize the system in unplanned ways to address pandemic-specific issues and new complexity raised by working remotely:

• To address the pandemic, they were able to create PPE and hand-washing training for all employees.
• In order stay in compliance with state laws related to medication administration and annual employee updates, they were able to create virtual coursework, testing and forms.

“I’m so thankful that we worked with Apparo and have this system in place,” Lori shares. “If we didn’t, I don’t know what we would have done.”

Beth adds, “There would have been a lot of panic and we would be out of compliance. All the work Apparo and Cardinal did with us positioned us in a place of safety, keeping the organization alive.”

In closing, Lori suggested some “cyberhugs” to celebrate the benefits.

We look forward to checking back in with LIFESPAN again after the pandemic to learn about other benefits that were anticipated at the close of the project:

• Ensured consistency in trainings
• Delivered immediacy for employees needing a training
• Boosted educational impact by allowing employees to:
  • Refresh their training
  • Select new classes at any time
  • Take their time/work at their own pace
  • Get the review they need confidently
• Automated reporting of classes completed/test scores, thereby:
  • Delivering insight into educational changes/improvements needed
  • Allowing ease of reporting needed to show credibility to funders
• Increased employee bandwidth 
  • Fewer days spent in trainings/delivering training (4,700 total hours saved):
    • New hire orientation – 3,300 hours saved per year: 2,700 new hire hours, plus 600 trainer hours
    • Job-specific training – 1,400 hours saved per year
    • This is the equivalent of more than 2 full-time employees, allowing $75,000+ in value to be redirected to job-specific, mission fulfilling work.
  • Less time spent on reporting
• Reduced expenses related to:
  • Mileage
  • In-person materials (snacks, paper)
• Improved health and safety metrics
• Improved quality of service to constituents, as employees are optimally educated to perform their jobs